Designing for aging

de Sandra C. Howell

This book provides guidelines for the design process based upon actual tenant behaviors and uses of space in housing for older people. It sets forth new or neglected issues which should concern program planners, housing developers and designers with regard to the impact and future marketability of these special-purpose settings. A product of a five-year HEW study which won the 1979 Progressive Architecture Award Competition in architectural research, this book contains the behavioral evidence on which alternative design solutions ought to be decided. Designing for Aging describes and interprets the responses of a large national sample of residents living in apartment buildings across the United States which conform to Federal Minimum Property Standards. In addition, an in-depth analysis of carefully selected specific spaces and their use by tenants was conducted in Cambridge, Massachusetts sites. Hundreds of hours of research time were spent in on-site observations and interviews with older inhabitants of government-subsidized housing. The techniques used to collect and analyze data are made explicit throughout the book for the benefit of professional readers and also in an attempt to demystify the research process and to open it to critical review. Howell notes, "the most important point that this material should convey is that older people need variations in the space in which they live." She argues that this necessitates not so much additional square footage as more careful spatial definition on the part of designers.